OpenAI says Apple’s own security practices undermine its trade secrets case
Newly filed court exhibits show OpenAI’s legal strategy in Apple’s trade secrets lawsuit: argue that Apple’s own security and offboarding practices — including allowing an Apple manager to access a former engineer’s iCloud account after he left the company —undermine its claims that the allegedly stolen information was properly protected.
The legal battle between Apple and OpenAI has taken a familiar turn. Rather than contest the substance of the alleged theft, OpenAI is attacking the foundation of Apple's claim: the security practices that were supposed to protect the information in the first place.
Newly filed court exhibits show OpenAI's strategy is to argue that Apple's own offboarding procedures were lax enough to undermine any assertion that the data was properly safeguarded. The detail that an Apple manager was allowed to access a former engineer's iCloud account after his departure is the kind of fact that shifts a trade secrets case from a question of who took what to a question of whether the secret was ever truly protected.
This is standard defense logic. Trade secrets law requires the holder to take reasonable measures to keep the information secret. If Apple's own practices allowed access to a departed employee's account, OpenAI can argue that the information was not subject to the kind of protection that warrants legal remedy. The case becomes less about the engineer's conduct and more about Apple's internal controls.
For observers, the significance is not the legal outcome but the pattern. In high-stakes disputes between technology giants, the security practices of the accuser are as much on trial as the actions of the accused. The exhibits are a reminder that corporate security is not just a technical matter; it is a legal vulnerability that can be exploited when the stakes are high enough.